Random Tracks

"Tush" -- ZZ Top
"I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide" -- ZZ Top
"Gone Gone Gone" -- Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
"Best Of My Love" -- The Commodores
"Take On Me" -- a-ha
"Someday I Will Kill You" -- Supersuckers

The inclusion of a-ha was a bit of a buzz-kill. Jet Li contends that happy music inspires better work-outs. "Take On Me" qualifies as a "happy song," but none of the (entirely pleasant) memories it conjures add to my iron-heaving will-power. Quite the opposite, really. Thank God for the Supersuckers.

Other songs: Chuck Klosterman once proposed that we respond to and remember bits of songs, as oppose to their whole. He enumerated several such bits -- the bagpipes in "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock 'n' Roll)" by AC/DC was the only one I remember. I think this theory, like so many he throws on paper, is half-baked but whimsical enough to stir the magazine reader's imagination. Suspending my criticism for a second longer, I'll propose that the cymbal work in "Gone Gone Gone" by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss is another such "bit." Remarkable how such a simple bit of "tic-tic-tic TSH-TSH-TSH-TSH TSH-TSH-TSH-TSH" gets the blood surging.